


or the one

by tigriswolf



Series: comment_fic drabbles [58]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 22:01:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim's got memories of a life he never lived where he was an old man, and buried his father in Iowa and his mother baked cookies... this isn't that life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	or the one

**Author's Note:**

> Title: or the one
> 
> Disclaimer: not my characters
> 
> Warnings: somewhat sad; spoilers for TOS movies
> 
> Pairings: none stated
> 
> Rating: PG
> 
> Wordcount: 265
> 
> Point of view: third
> 
> Prompt: Kirk & or /Spock, Jim tried to resist it, but he became just like his father anyway

Bones is going to kill him, and Spock will give him that _look_ and say something about logic and pride, and Jim's got memories of a life he never lived where he was an old man, and buried his father in Iowa and his mother baked cookies. It was a good life. Nothing was exciting about it until he was old enough to not be stupid.

This isn't that life, and he's not that man, and he never met his father, and his mother baked cookies, once. They burned.

Bones is going to kill him for doing this, except — well. Jim would need to be alive for Bones to kill him, and Jim can imagine that look of Spock's, because he'll never see it again.

In that other life, his father was proud of him. Mom, too. People have spent this whole life telling him to not let his father down, to be the man his father would've wanted, to stop wasting time and _do something_. 

And now... youngest captain in Starfleet history. Saved Earth and possibly the Federation.

Jim's got memories of a life he never lived and people he's never met and places he's never been to and things he's never done. And he knows that Spock killed himself to save them all, once, and he knows that Bones has always done his best to keep Jim from doing something stupid, and this… yeah. Bones would think this is stupid.

But Jim knows that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

His father taught him that.


End file.
